I bought some Gatorade on sale yesterday as someone said it would help me with leg cramps.

How often are you supposed to drink it?

I bought some fruit punch flavor.

Is it really as awful as Re-tired says it is?

Is there a less expensive way to purchase it? I paid over $5 for 6 bottles on sale.

Many thanks.

My husband saved his old Gatorade bottles, bought a couple of cans of the gatorade powder mix and makes his own. He prefers the orange but sometimes mixes it with fruit punch or lemon lime. As for leg cramps, you may want to check with your doctor but it could be low potassium. They can check your levels in routine lab work. I get leg cramps and I drink tonic water with a splash of lime and that seems to help. That and a lot of walking.

If you want something cheaper, look up "oral rehydration fluid recipe" in a good search engine - there are plenty of recipes out there.

If you drink plain water all the time, you can actually affect the fluid balance of your cells; too much water will cause minerals to leave your cells (salt is one of them) and can cause cramps - that's why Gatorade and other rehydration fluids have both salt and sugar in them.

I am on a potassium supplement and I take a magnesium supplement. I think that I will ask my doctor to check my levels.

Thanks.

I drink too many Cokes. I drink bottles of water instead. Last summer I got dehydrated terribly. My doctor worries about me.

Thanks.

Cheaper than Gatorade-  a banana and a glass of water- take it from a football mom!  Or oranges and water.  Or mix a liitle orane or apple juice, a little salt into water, check recipes.

There are tons of recipes if you lok under homemade sports drinks. 

I HATE bananas. Remember my telling you about my step-father? The first year he and Mom were married he worked for a produce distributor in Greensboro. Mom did so many recipes involving bananas and coconuts that I still hate those two fruits.

If I didn't hate bananas so much, I would eat them because they are relatively cheap.

I will look up the recipes.

Aurora wants me to save $$$ so that I can afford her food and toys. She promises to continue to look gorgeous and to have lush silky fur.

Thanks.

Ditto to the person who said you can get the recipe for oral rehydration fluid online.. it's easy and cheap, consisting of water, a tiny amount of sugar, of salt, and of baking soda (or was it powder? I forget now,) but here it is: http://rehydrate.org/solutions/homemade.htm

I use a pinch of potassium-based Featherweight Baking powder too to good effect.

But leg cramps are caused by a deficiency in the -iums: magnesium, calcium, potassium, and the sugar-salt-water rehydration fluid, or Gatorade, won't help much if at all. Citracal Plus with Magnesium kept the leg cramps away during pregnancy for me, and it is pricey, but cheap foods super-rich in magnesium are spinach, pumpkin and other winter squash seeds, and black beans. For potassium, everyone thinks of bananas, but beans of almost any type, as well as canned tomatoes and tomato sauces/tomato paste, and winter squash beat bananas for potassium, and spinach has a lot, so it's a good source for both.

Calcium, everyone thinks dairy, but my kids have dairy allergy so we have learned better ways to get calcium, including supplements and nondairy foods rich in calcium: turnip greens, broccoli, canned salmon with bones, and sardines in oil.

Also, eating too much protein and sodium causes calcium excretion in the urine, so eating less meat and salt will reduce calcium loss and therefore reduce the amount of supplementation needed.

hth,